Frequently Asked Questions About Our Charity Research and Recommendations

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Table of Contents

The basics
GiveWell's top charities
GiveWell's focus on global health
Other questions

The basics

What was your process for finding the Top Charities?

We considered hundreds of charities, systematically identified the most promising ones by our criteria, and did in-depth investigations (and published reviews) on the promising ones. For more detail, see Our Process.

I have a particular charity in mind. How can I see your view on this charity and why it isn't one of your top charities?

We list all charities considered at our process page, and this may include a review on the charity you're interested in. However, GiveWell focuses on finding the best charities possible, not on reviewing as many charities as possible. Understanding even a single charity in-depth generally takes hundreds of person-hours. So the content on any given non-recommended charity may be limited, aside from outlining why we didn't find the charity promising enough to investigate in depth.

We have written informally about our views on some well-known charities:

Why should I consider GiveWell's recommendations to be credible?

Reputation: GiveWell is respected by the media, scholars, nonprofit professionals, and donors.
Transparency: we publish the full details of our process, analysis and reasoning so that our audience can come to its own conclusions. View our full transparency policy.
External evaluations: GiveWell invites outsiders, often with relevant experience and credentials, to complete structured evaluations of our work. See all external evaluations to date along with information about the reviewers.
Impact: donors have given millions of dollars to GiveWell's top-rated charities based on our recommendations. See our summary of key impact metrics as well as our collection of guest blog posts from donors who have used our research.

GiveWell's top charities

How did you decide on the rankings (#1 vs. #2) of your two top charities?

We considered multiple factors, with a particular emphasis on cost-effectiveness (which one can accomplish more good per dollar spent). Details at our blog post on this topic.

What is the difference between Top Charities and Standout Charities?

Top Charities are the organizations that we feel will accomplish the most good, per dollar contributed.

"Standout" organizations may appeal to donors interested in other causes. We award the "standout" distinction to organizations that meet the following criteria:

We have found the charities interesting and promising enough to continue in-depth investigation of.
The charities have participated fully in our process and helped us gain all the information we needed to assess them fully by our criteria.
The charities have cleared us to publish in-depth reviews discussing their performance by these criteria.
After considering all available information, we feel that these charities represent outstanding opportunities for donors to accomplish good.

There is an element of arbitrariness to which charities get investigated in enough depth to contend for a "Standout" rating. Our priorities change over time, and some in-depth investigations happen because it is logistically convenient to visit an organization's field operations (as part of a longer visit). (For a better understanding of this dynamic, please see our process page.

Some of GiveWell's recommended charities are not U.S.-registered charities. Should I be concerned about this?

We don't think so. The process for becoming a U.S.-registered charity can be long and relatively involved, and some of our recommended charities have not had enough interest from U.S. donors (prior to our recommendation) to have gone through this process. However, we have examined the financial records and established the charitable purposes of all recommended organizations, and for all such organizations we provide some way of getting a tax deduction for supporting them (in some cases by donating to GiveWell, which can regrant donations to these organizations).

Is there really a need for more bednets?

We believe that there is a very large need for more bednets to cover at-risk populations. Details at our writeup on net distribution.

Do people use the free bednets they get?

While this is one of our remaining concerns, we believe the best available evidence suggests a "yes" answer. Multiple studies associate nets with cost-effective reductions in malaria burden and child deaths; these studies generally saw usage rates in the 60-80% range; and the best available evidence suggests that usage rates of 60-80% are common. Details at our writeup on net distribution.

What are the benefits of deworming?

Treating children for parasitic infections (deworming) is very inexpensive and appears to have some benefit, though the exact nature and extent of the benefit is relatively unclear. We believe that deworming can be expected to slightly reduce anemia and perhaps have other subtle general health benefits; may reduce the occurrence of rare but severe symptoms, such as serious organ damage and death; and may have long-lasting developmental benefits for children, leading to higher earnings later in life. More

Our guess is that deworming children is likely to be less cost-effective (in terms of quality-of-life benefits per dollar spent) than distribution of long-lasting insecticide-treated nets (LLINs), but may be more cost-effective; the question comes down to personal values and estimates of highly uncertain figures. Deworming adults appears significantly less cost-effective.

How much money do your top charities need? How much do you expect to get them?

Each review of a recommended charity discusses its room for more funding, i.e., how much more funding it can productively absorb and how this funding would change its activities. We closely track the revenue received by recommended charities, and we cease to recommend donating to a charity once we feel it no longer has short-term room for more funding.

GiveWell's focus on global health

Why do most of your recommended charities work on international aid?

We have focused on international aid because this is where we feel an individual donor can accomplish the most good (in terms of significant life change) per dollar given. More

We have investigated U.S. charity in the past and may do so again in the future. See our recommendations for donors interested in focusing on the U.S.

Why do your top charities both work on health? What about other causes like education and raising incomes?

Many health-focused programs have extraordinarily strong track records and strong cost-effectiveness (in terms of good accomplished per dollar spent). Non-health activities tend to have much weaker evidence bases, and are often substantially more expensive per person served while not clearly providing more benefit. A 2011 blog post summarizes our view that global health and nutrition is the most promising cause for individual donors.

Do the people whose lives are saved just die the next year from something else? What is their quality of life?

We discuss these issues at our writeup on quality of life in the developing world. On one hand, people in Sub-Saharan Africa are much worse off, and much more likely to die prematurely, than people in wealthier parts of the world. On the other hand, those who live past the age of 5 have strong chances of living to age 60 or so; saving a life even from a single cause of death means saving a person who is likely to live quite a while longer.

Does saving lives just lead to overpopulation and long-run damage?

We will be publishing a piece on this topic relatively soon. In brief:

Some believe that saving lives can directly slow population growth, since people may have fewer children when they are less worried about losing some to infant mortality. Others believe that saving lives is likely to increase population growth when unaccompanied by progress on other fronts, such as economic growth and education.
It is also not clear whether, and when, population growth is helpful vs. harmful.
Our view is that the evidence on these topics is inconclusive, but that one would need great confidence (greater confidence than is reasonable given the evidence) in the negative impact of population growth in order to abstain from cheaply preventing deaths.
Donors who are more concerned about this issue than we are may wish to support our #2 charity, the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI), which treats parasitic infections that can be debilitating but are very rarely fatal.

I'm trying to figure out where to give, but you haven't covered my cause, and it looks like you aren't going to in the near future. Any advice?

We publish critical questions that you can ask charities working in causes we haven't covered. These questions are based only on our very limited understanding of these causes, but they may be useful starting points.

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